All things that Suck, and a few things that are Awesome

Tag Archives: Donald Trump

So here’s what I’ve been up to the past few months (besides not posting a damn thing on Everything Sucks). I was working a new job which over the course of a half-year became unbearable. I worked for two package shipping companies which as you would expect was a mistake during the holiday season. I made it through peak season but instantly quit one of the jobs afterwards. Thinking about going back to that job makes me physically ill.

My sister said that motivation is like a muscle: you can only use it so much. She might’ve stolen that from somewhere so don’t blame me for stealing someone’s quote because I didn’t know about it. I suppose that working two jobs outside in the winter wore me out a bit and the blog suffered from neglect (along with my diet, my weight, my happiness, and my sobriety, etc.). I intend to change that now that I’ve quit.

A few of my older posts were rather political. Now don’t get me wrong, Donald Trump is a piece of shit and probably the worst president we’ve ever had, but there isn’t any point in blogging about it. The way I see it there is way too much political shit out there and I’m really worried that people are becoming fatigued by it. Trump Sucks, Trump Sucks day after day but we’re stuck with him so why fucking throw it up on the news nonstop. People are just to the point that they don’t give a fuck to hear anymore, or at least I am.

I took a break from the constant stream of news and toxic social media and the quality of my life improved immensely. Others should try not being exposed as much.

More to the point, why should I blog about it? As much as I’d like to think that I can change people’s minds I probably can’t. If the (“failing”) New York Times can’t get Trump supporters to change their minds with actual in-depth reporting why the fuck would some random unknown blogger such as TheBlackHairedGuy change any minds? It would be like expecting this shit to actually change my (or any anti-Trumpers) mind. It won’t and it works both ways. Their stupid shit won’t change my mind, and my stupid shit won’t change their minds.

Writing about politics itself Sucks. Trump is so goddamn all over the place I’d be chasing headline after headline and that’s exhausting. Even though it’d be “popular” to shit on Trump it’s a very cheap sort of popularity. Political posts also age very quickly and my last post about the Nazi dudes is such long forgotten news that it’s pointless to even have it up anymore. Do you even remember RyanCare? I sure didn’t.

I want Everything Sucks to be about things that Suck, but I want it to be in a fun and maybe depressing way. A sort of “Haha, life is shit, but it’s kinda funny.” So that’s what I’m going to try to stick to. And goodbye to the political posts because they Suck.

In case you weren’t aware (or to recap), our Dear Leader Mr. Donald J. Trump announced in a series of tweets back in July stating that transgender people will not be allowed to serve in the military. Okay. And today, on August 25, he apparently made it official by signing some shit or whatever banning these individuals from the military. It’s still up in the air as to if current military members will still be allowed to serve. This is Everything Sucks, and this is a really stupid policy, but what else did we expect from the president?

The policy makes zero sense. I really don’t see how it is supposed to help anything. Remember, Trump has promised to Make America Great Again, and…how does banning transgender people from the military help anything? I don’t agree with nearly all of the Trump Administration’s policies, but in a distorted way I understand how most can be seen to play into the goal of “making America great again.” Take for example coal and the environment: Trump has undone a bunch of regulations targeted to “bring back coal jobs” and while I’m skeptical of other aspects of the policy (if it’s realistic, if it’s correct given the existence of climate change, if market pressures will allow coal to become popular, etc.) I can still see how this can be seen by supporters to “make America great” by “bringing back” coal jobs. Like I said, I’m doubtful coal will ever be “brought back” or even should be brought back if it is able to be brought back, but I get how people would view Trump’s environmental deregulation as being in-line with his stated goal. If you want coal and really think that’s why the economy sucks it makes sense. But the transgender military ban? What? How does that play into Make America Great at all?

It has been said that the cost of gender reassignment surgeries and medication is one reason for the ban (the primary reason actually. According to a tweet: “…cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail.”). It doesn’t take a math wiz to realize how tiny of a drop in the budget bucket this really is though. According to this Washington Post article, transgender medical costs in the military could be up to $8.4 million annually. This, according to a study done by the Rand Corp., is an increase of 0.13% over current costs. Another popular fact to bring up (that has been brought up elsewhere) is the current costs of erectile dysfunction to the military: $84 million annually. In case you were wondering, the total military budget in 2015 was almost $600 billion. $10 million is fucking pocket change. And if Trump is really trying to cut costs by cutting transgenders from the military, he’s targeting the wrong thing. It’s like if the manager at walmart was trying to save budget costs by making the staff stop using post-it notes.

Is there another reason? I don’t know. None seem to jump out at me. Trump makes no sense and the only other reason I can see for this change in policy is to simply be a dick to people. I really think the only reason he wants to repeal Obamacare is because the word “Obama” is in the name. There seems to be no real, logical reason to ban transgenders from the military; cost is given as the primary reason but is so small as to be basically zero. If you’re going to cut costs there are countless other ways to save a few pennies. So the only alternative to the ban is to simply be a dick. I really don’t see what else the reason is. Maybe it’s some way to wage war against the PC culture or something? Either way, if you’re the president and you base policy off being a dick, you probably Suck.

As a liberal-leaning person, I get really pissed off when my obvious conservative friends and acquaintances share news stories from Fox News. These stories are obviously biased (“But only because the mainstream media is left-biased!”) and I don’t understand why anyone would ever be proud of getting their news from such a biased source. But Fox News isn’t even that bad compared to Breitbart or some of the other really questionable news sources out there. I’m talking the American News sites out there. Everything on these sites are so perfectly geared to target the conservative mindset it’s almost unbelievable. I don’t get how people can read shit that just confirms everything they believe and not be any bit suspicious of it.

I used the conservative news outlets as an example because they are most obvious to me as a left-leaning person. But the thing is that the left has it’s own bullshit websites and it’s own news (or even “news”) networks that conjure up the same hate and nonsense that the right has. It isn’t as visible (to me at least) but it’s there and it’s equally pathetic.

For the equivalent of Fox News you have MSNBC. While Fox has shit to prop up the conservative agenda and try to make Trump out to be a masterful genius, MSNBC does the exact same thing in the opposite direction by demonizing him. Everything is how terrible Trump is, how he’s destroying America, how he’s moments away from being impeached, and while the stories do present facts, the speculation and “meaning” of those facts is used to paint Trump is a highly negative view. How about Huffington Post? Nope. I’ve read enough stories from there to know that it’s going to be feel-good liberal propaganda to get me and other like-minded people riled up about Trump. I don’t know how Mother Jones compares to American News, but they seem to be nearly equal and opposites of the same idea: fear mongering to appeal to a single side. Democracy Now! seems even worse though, go check it out.

I really think part of the problem with our current state of sensationalized, polarized politics is due to this sort of one-sided news reporting, where facts take second stage to the speculation behind a story. Facts are pretty damn tame stuff that sound boring. Do an experiment for yourself: go to the BBC News website and then go to either American News, Mother Jones, or Democracy Now! and check out how “important and scary” the headlines sound; how scary is the world we live in? The BBC reports some boring facts: Trump got his travel ban knocked down (again), there was an earthquake in Greenland, and…whatever. The Huffington Post declares that “TRUMP SLIPS ON BAN APPEAL.” Same news story with the same facts but different presentation in the headline. American News pronounces on a video that “Anti Sharia Law Rallies Erupt in Major Cities Across the Country – Chaos Ensues [LOOK]” Wow. Holy shit! Apparently people are trying to push Sharia law in the US and there’s basically a WAR going on over how crazy this is? Apparently the BBC doesn’t give two shits about it, probably because it’s sensationalized bullshit that a cheap conservative news website shoveled out to rally their base. HuffPost also mentions that a congressman unveiled an impeachment draft against Trump, which is curiously absent from the front page of the other two websites, almost as if it’s sensationalized bullshit that a cheap liberal news website shoveled out to rally their base. Democracy Now! has a damn category at the top called “Impeachment.” Protip: Trump isn’t immediately on the verge of being impeached (He’s going to be impeached — I’ll bet money on it — but it doesn’t require a headline yet.). CNN, just for shits and giggles declares that “Dennis Rodman heading to North Korea.” CNN has good bigly news people…[Like everything else, I wrote this shit yesterday so the headlines changed; you won’t see the headlines I mentioned. I can’t keep up with this shit.]

I’m not saying the BBC are infallible journalists or whatever, they just seem to present dry facts with minimal bullshit that these other examples present. My point here is that if you are a conservative and only read/watch conservative news, aren’t you just being spoonfed a bunch of shit that you already know and that makes you feel comfortable in your worldview? The same goes for a liberal person as well: if you already know for a fact that Trump is the devil himself, why do you need to read a bunch of shit confirming it? Whenever I see a link shared on Facebook from HuffPost or Democracy Now! I never click it because I know it’s going to be shit. Same when I see a Fox News or American News or Liberty-Whatever-The-Fuck-News from someone proclaiming “They’re going to take our guns!” It’s confirmation bias in a near textbook form — no one wants to possibly accept a different worldview so we close our minds off from the possibility while simultaneously thinking we’re being open to new facts but not really.

It doesn’t all involve simple news websites and channels as well: it also applies to social media. I think I’ll write more about this later, but we all have our favor sites to visit and people to interact with. Do these influence our worldview in a negative way? Do they tell us happy things we already know? Do they scare us into sticking with our current beliefs? I frequent Reddit, and I’ll use it as an example. Check out the World News subreddit. It leans left and if you look at any posts about Donald Trump it will have tons of hate. It’s fun to read too. Now check out The_Donald. It speaks for itself. They’re Echo Chambers: places to hear the same confirming facts over and over again.

So, obviously, that all Sucks. There are facts – indisputable facts – but the interpretation of those facts is down to whoever you seem to ask. If all you read are these borderline news websites that just regurgitate your worldview you aren’t learning anything and aren’t doing anything to solve the problem. We all have our Echo Chambers that solidify our worldviews and this does nobody any favors. This applies to both political outlooks conservative and liberal alike, so don’t think you’re up on a high horse when everyone else is stupid. It goes without saying that this lack of mixing ideas and compromising Sucks and has a large part to play in how polarized our current state of politics is.

Note: Like I noted in my first postabout the Dolan, I noted that there is a struggle between making relevant posts about Trump and keeping it up to date with all the shit that happens so quickly. I’ll try to put relevant notes and updates around instead of trying to rewrite the damn thing over and over…

It was like the Tweet Heard ’round the World, or something like that. As I awoke, I checked Facebook on my phone and somehow this strange word was being thrown around. Here. I’ll write it out right now:

Covfefe

At the time, with the haze of just waking up, I knew something had happened in the world that I wasn’t aware of yet. It’s sort of how you might wake up to find news about a celebrity dying, and see tons of posts about it, but where you still don’t know what actually happened. That’s sort of how it was with me and covfefe a few days ago.

Now that we all know what covfefe is…well maybe you don’t! Let’s cover that really quickly. Donald Trump, our tweeter extroidiane is known to tweet stupid shit at crazy hours of the morning instead of, well, maybe relaxing because being president is a tough job. These tweets are often about the media being mean to him and how it’s unfair #MAGA. I don’t give two fucks about if you think it’s unfair and that the “fake news” is trying to crucify the guy: you still don’t get on twitter and cry about it. That’s what a 4-year-old would do. Anyways, this is what he does, and it isn’t that big of a deal; we’re all used to it by now. But then this beauty appears. Update: He did delete it so I can’t link to the “real one.” But the internet doesn’t forget stuff, so here’s a screenshot:

Thanks to whoever screencapped this. And whoever I stole it from. Whatever.

It starts off in a predictable way and no one would’ve batted an eye to in had it continued like you might’ve expected it to. “Despite the constant negative press…” But then, suddenly, the tweet goes fucking insane and ridiculous and it’s over without any punctuation, “Sad!,” or anything else to let you know it’s over. It’s like a gunshot to your eyeballs: covfefe.

Why does covfefe suck?

Covfefe isn’t really a big deal: no one has died (maybe from laughter though, or knowing how pathetic America as a whole appears to the rest of the civilized world?), the environment hasn’t been polluted (Update: We left the Paris Climate Agreement Thingy so yeah, we’re sort of fucked, but not in relation to covfefe…), and we aren’t in another war (yet). The president, by tweeting covfefe did almost no harm to anything. So why the fuck is there a post about this Sucking? There’s are a few reasons. Let’s get started.

First off, covfefe isn’t a real word which is stupid. The sentence ending without any punctuation hinted that covfefe isn’t a real word — as well as no one knowing what the hell it was — and the fact that every time I write that profaned word it’s underlined by Google Docs furthers the point. You could look up covfefe in a dictionary but you wouldn’t find anything because it’s not a real word! It doesn’t even sound like a real word, so you can’t even insist the guy made it up like Colbert did withtruthiness. At least that word is pronounceable. Covfefe isn’t a real word, and it would a shitty attempt at a “making new word.”

Secondly, it appears to be a spelling error which is even stupider. By using context clues to figure out a word you don’t know the meaning of — just like we were taught back in fifth grade — seems to hint that covfefe is meant to be coverage. This fits well following the tweet’s “constant negative press” and sounds like a word you’d expect in a typical Trump tweet. This pushes the whole ordeal into the realm of being a misspelled word, but fuck is it misspelled! The first three letters, cov-, match in both the words, but covfefe ends in a -fefe while coverage ends in -erage. Let’s all bust out our phone keypads and check them out: the –erage seems to be sort of close to fefe on a typical phone keyboard, but the “a” is way off to the left! If the word is misspelled from coverage, well, it sure is a hell of a misspell that autocorrect didn’t get to lay a single finger on.

So it’s a misspell. So what? Well, the tweet ends there. No explanation, no finishing the thought. Had the tweet read “Despite the constant negative press covfefe I had a bigly successful erupoean visit! #MAGA!” we would’ve all laughed at how he butchered a word words that is are pretty common and easy to spell. I mean even if you let him slip on a spelling error, what the fuck happened to the rest of the sentence? It’s gone, absent, and further enhances the stupid mystique of covfefe. We have another stupid-ass strike in this covfefe affair: it’s a sentence fragment.

But that isn’t all, no. Far from it! Covfefe gets worse! You see, covfefe isn’t a translation error, a transcription error, and it isn’t a speaking error. People stumble, stutter, and misspeak all the time while giving speeches but no one laughs at them because it’s live and people fuck up. But this is a written tweet that he is in control of. What we see isn’t a live thing, where if he fucked up you might see the mistake and forgive him. No. He had to type it out and somehow post this train wreck without noticing or thinking to reread it. To me, that is the most damning thing about it. You have to fuck up pretty badly to type such a horrific thing on a phone, AND THEN POST IT.AND THEN NOT DELETE IT IMMEDIATELY AFTER YOU REALIZE WHAT YOU’VE DONE! (Update: It has been deleted. :() With Trump, I imagine he was tweeting in secret for fear of losing his phone and then upon being caught immediately posted it. My point here is that there is a record of it now. Had he deleted it before he posted it, no one would’ve know. But here we are…

…So Why is covfefe Bad?

Like I said, no one was really harmed by this incident. But to me it speaks volumes about the president and his incompetence that should somehow be free of partisan viewpoints. Look, people can disagree on whether trickle down economics works or not, and each side could present facts and arguments supporting their viewpoints, and then each side could argue about it.

But covfefe isn’t some policy bullshit to be argued over in perpetuity; it’s a train wreck tweet that is so bad it’s amazing the president of the United States posted it. It’s so amateurish it’s laughable. It’s totally harmless to any policy or anything that will have a major effect. No one should be up in arms about covfefe because it’s so stupid and trivial. But that’s kinda my point: if it’s so trivial why is it even a thing?

Remember in high school or college where you were expected to know how to spell or to use commas? It’s kind of like that. Having proper grammar shows others that you care about details and how your argument, views, and opinions appear. I don’t think anyone purposely uses bad grammar; some just don’t seem to care about the details of it or haven’t learned yet. But it always seems to be a goal that should be strived towards. As you get higher in school, or the world, you’re simply expected to know how to spell words or to use a comma. As I see it, if you can’t spell or use grammar properly, why would I expect that’d you’d be a good doctor, scientist, financial advisor, or anything really? If you can’t be bothered to use the right their, they’re, or there, why the fuck would I think you’d be competent in any other skill? Sure Donald Trump might be a master businessman, but really? You think so? When he can’t spell coverage correctly and stop himself from posting it? This is the guy playing 45-dimensional chess with the Russians? Come on.

He doesn’t care. He’s sloppy. Consequences don’t exist to him. Spelling doesn’t matter. Deleting a stupid tweet doesn’t matter. Why would anyone have faith in a person so incompetent as to misspell coverage as covfefe and post it. Why would this guy ever be expected to subtly understand policy and complex topics such as the world economy when he can’t proofread a tweet? Covfefe is a microcosm of everything wrong with Trump, made perfectly clear in a simple 7 letter “word.” say it again. Covfefe. Donald trump Sucks.

Update: The spin begins. Trump’s buddies are hinting that covfefe was just a thing to get liberals and the media riled up as some sort of a “joke.” Or to point at how the media is stupid and overreacts. Others have said that covfefe is an inside joke and according to Sean Spicer “The president and a small group of people know exactly what he meant.” Dolan also went on twitter and posted this gem, further driving the “I did it on purpose!” story: